Kill 'em With Kindness

I had someone unsubscribe to The Daily Dirtnap yesterday. It was a woman who objected to the use of the word “fartmaxxing” in the newsletter. Which is very funny. Anyway, she and I had a long history—I don’t swear or curse in the newsletter, but I do use colorful language sometimes, and talk about impolite things, and she had registered complaints in the past, but fartmaxxing was apparently a bridge too far.

She wrote me a pretty angry email. And it was provocative—designed to provoke. I didn’t take the bait. There are a lot of things I could have said, and as you know from reading this newsletter for however long you have been reading the newsletter, my wit can be an atom bomb, and I could have said something that was simultaneously hilarious and devastating, but I simply said, “Best of luck to you!” and went on about my day.

Now, this the uncountably infinite time I have dealt with this in my newsletter career. You wouldn’t believe some of the things people have said to me. Someone once called me “The scum, the filth, the bottom rung of society that preys on the unsophisticated.” That was one of the more articulate ones. Some of the other ones have involved buttsex. You deal with the public, you are bound to get some weirdos (which is one of the reasons I am not long for this business). My response is usually the same. “Thanks for trying it out! Best of luck!” Takes the wind out of their sails pretty quickly. In the few occasions in which I decided to wrestle with the pig, I have regretted it. Arguing with idiots is no fun, because idiots are last word freaks and they don’t know when they’ve been conquered. They will keep coming back for more. Then I am upset, and my day is ruined.

Being nice is a good way to defuse any situation, and it tends to be a good way to win friends and influence people. Another newsletter story: I had a subscriber at a hedge fund who was mildly belligerent. I’d hear from him about once a month, when he’d be tearing me a new asshole about something or other. The simple answer is that we had different politics. This went on for many years. After each email, I’d send him a nice response, politely disagreeing, so it didn’t turn into Wrestlemania. Well, he left the hedge fund recently, and in his parting email, told me that I was a “class act,” for being so nice to him all those years, and he wished me well. That was a happy ending. And this was a classic left/right conflict, and these days, left/right conflicts are not so easily reconciled. I mean, a few years ago people were LARPing Braveheart on the streets of Portland. Now, don’t get me wrong, some of his emails went up my nose, and I was provoked, but I always kept my cool and responded politely. Not an accident that the Dirtnap has been so successful all these years.

I am not always so charitable, especially in person, although the South tends to be a conflict-avoidance culture, because the consequences of conflict are usually guns. An acquaintance of mine recently got into an argument in a Publix parking lot and it resulted in him taking a bullet. True story. There is an easy answer to this: don’t get angry. You can’t get provoked if you are unprovok-able. There have been times where I’ve cut someone off on the road (by accident) and they pull up next to my car in a homicidal rage, screaming and shaking their fist at me. The wrong thing to do in this situation would be…to respond in kind! That’s how people get killed. Just give them the “I fucked up” wave and go on about your day. I spend a lot of time going on about my day. Like, are you actually going to be able to prove to the homicidal maniac that you are right? There is an honor culture, which varies as you go around the country, but some people don’t like to lose face. I have no problem losing face, as long as it doesn’t result in the loss of my face. A really dumb way to die would be to get shot in a Publix Parking lot because you didn’t put the shopping cart away.

I don’t know about now, but back in 1997, when I was in law enforcement training, we were always instructed to defuse situations, as an alternative to using physical force. It seems that for a period of time, the police liked to go straight to physical force. Maybe that is changing. But yes, in 1997, the goal was to keep everyone safe, and there were no time constraints on a boarding at sea, so you would spend as much time as necessary talking someone off the ledge, and that often involved being nice to them. Using the minimum force necessary to compel compliance. If you were good at verbal judo, you never had to take your baton or pepper spray out. I think a lot of LEOs get obsessively focused on people not obeying orders, and then there is a loss of face, and then they get physical. About 10 years ago, there was a woman in my town who was suicidal and barricaded herself in her bathroom with a knife. Cops showed up, told her to put down the knife, she didn’t, and they killed her. A lot of suicidal people have been killed by police in such fashion. Someone who is having a mental health crisis isn’t going to obey orders, and they can’t be reasoned with. You have to be nice to them. This doesn’t come naturally to some people.

Anyway, I decided to start killing ‘em with kindness about 5-6 years ago, when I visited one of my former colleagues in NYC. He told a story, and I don’t remember one iota of the story, but I remember the takeaway: kill ‘em with kindness. Bill Clinton famously killed ‘em with kindness. So does Trump, believe it or not! Yes, Trump has insulted pretty much everyone he has come in contact with, including his own Secreatry of State (“Little Marco”), but privately, Trump is allegedly one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. Yes, I know you find this hard to believe, but I have heard first- and second-hand stories. He remembers people’s names, and he takes time to talk to people, no matter what their station in life. You might think it is an accident that Trump became president. I assure you it is not an accident. Any person who reaches that level in politics has some pretty refined people skills (with a few exceptions). That’s why I’m not cut out to be a politician. I’m one of those people who will forget your name three seconds after meeting you, and then I’ll have to sneak around and go ask someone else what your name is, so as to avoid embarrassment. To be a politician, you have to be genuinely interested in other people—even idiots! I am not interested in the idiots.

People are going to have a bug up their ass and come after you from time to time. If you’re public-facing, it will happen a lot. Especially on social media. Instead of trying to come up with the perfect dunk quote tweet, I just let it go (as I do with most things), and sometimes I am actually nice. Level 99 of the video game is when you are nice to people you despise—and you mean it! And yes, it was worth writing fartmaxxing in the newsletter. Now excuse me while I go eat some Bush’s baked beans and sauerkraut.